[CentOS] shared memory - shmmax - shmall - page_size

Wed Aug 19 15:28:44 UTC 2015
Michael H <michael at wemoto.com>

Hi List,

I'm tuning up a new database server and I'm finding very mixed 
information online.

Here are the default shmmax and shmall from my new system

cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
4294967295

cat /proc/sys/kernel/shmall
268435456

SHMALL is close enough to being SHMMAX / 16.

Now, everything I'm finding online tells me that SHMALL = SHMMAX / 
PAGE_SIZE. default page size is 4096.

Has something changed in this calculation? should the defaults be set on 
SHMALL = SHMMAX / 16??

I'm running CentOS Linux release 7.1.1503 (Core), my old database is 
running CentOS release 6.6 (Final) and I'm seeing the same calculations 
there too.

Can somebody please point me in the right direction, I've had a look at 
pgtune here http://pgtune.leopard.in.ua/, I will not be using the 
'default' calculated configuration that it suggests but I noticed the 
shmall = shmmax / page_size (4096).

I'll benchmark with both calculations but I would really appreciate some 
confirmation on this.

thanks

Michael